I have a question.
I tried to install Os9 on my wife'/s ibook, i took the system folder off the cd and put it on her ibook, set it to boot from the os9 system folder but it gives me a happy mac folder then question mark, then happy mac, then questionmark and now i cant boot into osx!! any help?
the cd wasOS9.1
The mac: iBook G3 800/30gig/384mb/cdrom/32megs vram

The Happy Mac means that the Boot Rom and Hardware checks out.
The flashing Question Mark means it can't find a start up folder correctly. This usually happens when a system is blessed incorrectly or the start up drive it used before has disappeared.
To fix this, hold the option key when you start up and rechoose your start up disk. Once you've started up off that disk reset your Startup Folder again in the Startup Disk Control Panel and you should be set.

If no hard drives appeared when holding the option key (which boots into Open Firmware) then it stands to reason that the hard drive either has become pooched or from what it sounds it can't see which system folder to start up on. Using the Panther disk you were able to tell the computer which folder to start up on again?

If no hard drives appeared when holding the option key (which boots into Open Firmware) then it stands to reason that the hard drive either has become pooched or from what it sounds it can't see which system folder to start up on. Using the Panther disk you were able to tell the computer which folder to start up on again?

Yup. The panther disc did the trick. I couldnt use tiger as its a dvd and this ibook only has cdrom.